Quoted from Whysnow:This guy does not seem to see that there is more than enough room in the pinball pf reproduction market and even he and his robots can not possibly meet the demands of the community.
Snowman, I'm not sure I agree with that.
First, you have to admit that some pins are never going go to a value that anyone would want to bury their selves in by restoring a play field. The best some of these pins can ever hope for is play field protector. Or a professional restoration.
2nd, how many TAFs will be restored with a repro play field before the saturation point is reached, for example?
3rd, how many play fields have to be produced and sold for it to be a profitable venture?
4th, how many people are willing to make the investment of hundreds of dollars to restore their pin? I have buried myself in my Stern Big Game by having the play field restored. How many more would be willing to do this for a Big Game? Only 2700 were produced and there is no idea of how many are left?
Stern produced 2,503 Seawitches. How many Seawitches are still living? How many will be restored?
Look at CPR. There were 18,250 Bally Playboys produced and CPR is on its 2nd run because they sell.
OTOH, 10,100 Joker Pokers produced and two years on CPR still has them for sale. 200 Pinsiders own JP. There are 149 wishlisters. Are JPs being restored with a new play field?
3700 Sorcerers were produced. How many are left to see a new play field? How many will be restored?
I don't have any numbers, but my thinking is that most of the repro play fields have been limited to the Top 100. And that is not that large of market.
So, if you own a big hungry machine that can make a lot of play fields there comes a point in time where you have to branch out and look for new business.
Mirco got his eyes opened when he canvassed for interest in the Stern Quicksilver play field. He found there was enough demand to produce a QS play field. I"m only guessing but I would be willing to bet that demand for less than 25 play fields. A big hungry machine can eat that up in a couple of weeks and has to go shopping for more.
You very well could be correct that there is room for everybody, but I'm not seeing it that way.